Do You Matter in an Election?

or, Do Elections Matter to You?

By Jerry Climer

What does it reflect when thousands or even millions of eligible voters do not participate in a general election? The question is even more relevant when thinking about primaries, which rarely have more than 25% of the eligible voting.

In our book, Fixing Congress, co-author Mike S. Johnson and I discuss several reform ideas to restore power to the people that we think are worthy of discussion and debate. The need for such debate is illustrated by voters self-selecting NOT to participate and by the general dissatisfaction voters have for people put into office at the highest levels of our democracy.

It would be nice to think they do not participate because they are happy with the way things are going. But research data says the lack of enthusiasm is related to a general feeling that a vote does not make a difference, that forces (money and media) beyond the local voter have more sway, and that most campaigns are insults to the intelligence of most voters by their excessive spending and oversimplification of relevant issues.

Among the culprits we discuss in Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People is campaign finance reform. A cynic might say that Congress set very low levels for contributions from a single voter and then created gigantic loopholes. Those loopholes allow outside groups and individuals to overwhelm the clout of the local folks.

We review numerous examples of legal but, some might say, democratically questionable ways political action committees and special interests can have greater financial influence over elections. One of the most significant reforms we discuss in Chapter 14, would be to limit donations to just those folks able to vote in the election.

Billionaires living on the moon would not have the ability to send money to local candidates X or Y or to fund groups campaigning for or against X or Y. That is a big shift from current law and might even take a Constitutional Amendment to accomplish, but our view is that the power of deciding an election needs to be restored to the voters in that district or state. Free speech does not allow you to shout “fire” in a crowded theater, so why should it allow you to shout “vote for Joe” when you don’t live in Joe’s district?

Congressional redistricting is another way in which the voter gets pushed out of the game. Today, each congressional district consists of around 762,000 residents. Where else does one person have so little influence? Local grocery stores don’t serve that many people, and neither do churches, schools, or factories employ that many. In the most significant relationship in a democracy, the voter is reduced to a ratio of one person out of 762,000, hardly a number to make that person feel heard or influential.

To offer contrast in our book, Mike and I explore representation ratios in other democracies. New Hampshire’s 400 state legislators serve a population of 1,360,000, which means each state representative serves 3,400 neighbors; to England’s lower House of Commons, which has 650 members representing a population of 67,886,000 or one representative for every 104,440 people. France has 577 deputies in the National Assembly for a population of 67,000,000 or one deputy for 116,117 citizens. Our neighbor Canada’s House of Commons has 338 members serving a population of 37,742,154, or one member per every 111,663 citizens.

Yet, in the US we wonder why voters feel and act disconnected while being one of 762,000 residents. Does that feeling of not being connected explain why too many voters feel our democracy is not working?

For mathematically inclined reform-minded citizens, we also discuss the Cube Root Rule that some advocates believe would enhance that connection between a citizen and his or her representative. Chapter 14 gets into the nitty-gritty of that concept and offers some mathematical logic for such a ratio.

But as you read, remember that the size of our congressional districts and the number of members of Congress is not established by the Constitution. The first Congress’s 65 Members each represented about 30,000 residents. Our current size for the average district, 762,000, is an artificial number created by the US Congress that has not been changed in well over 100 years. It is time for a new conversation about the ratio of each representative to each citizen.